I’m sorry, I did not mean for this comment to be a political point, but rather an observation on how technology is used in mass atrocities. I was hoping to raise a point which I find interesting, which other may or may not agree with. I’ve gotten a couple of excellent replies here raising interesting counterpoints.

After posting this, and reading the replies, I’m actually less convinced about my original point. That is, I’ve learned something.

I believe you, but it's too fine a distinction to make a difference on the important point. Your account has obviously been primarily (even exclusively) focused on this one topic for quite a while now. That's not allowed on HN because if we did allow it, HN would dramatically shift towards becoming a current-affairs site, which is not its mandate.

This is not to say that the topic doesn't matter. Of course it matters, a great deal—more than almost anything that gets discussed here. But that not only doesn't change the above point, it makes it even more important.

As I said the last time I replied to you, I appreciate that your comments have mostly not been breaking the site guidelines in other ways. But the "primarily" test applies regardless.

I don't want to ban you as you've been here a long time and have used the site as intended in the past. But I have to go quite a long way back into the past before that becomes visible. This is not ok.

One nerd to another, I'm rooting for you here, and just want to write a note real quickly that it's very easy to get sucked into this topic. The dopamine circuit we're playing with is a quirk of homo messageboardicus. A couple days ago I did a bunch of conscious things to keep me away from this topic on HN, and with a day or so of detox I've regained my original perspective that this is a deeply cursed species of HN thread. There's lots of other stuff to talk about!

I got very lucky, and the very next day someone started an argument about the futility and/or propriety of user-mode TCP/IP stacks and WireGuard. I wish for you a similarly irresistible nerd snipe for whatever nerd topic lights you up. Good luck!

That would be cross browser support for MathML, or other tools to get math expressions typeset on the web. Those discussions only pop up like once every six months though.

I’m actually way more of a lurker here. There are e.g. once a month a submission about Bayesian Analysis (and a guaranteed once a year submission about Kalman Filters) which I religiously read but hardly ever contribute to (unless a frequentist is advocating for IQ tests or other psychometric devises; then I for sure contribute; but that can lead to flame-wars easily). Every so often there is a back end engineer with an “opinion” on the front end stack which I sometimes answer for, however that often be a flame-y subject, for some reason I’m less tempted to be sucked into flamewars when the subject is actually aligned with my expertise.

It seems you've been triggered by the mention of the g-word. But when we calmly consider what the commenter is saying:

   Israel is using information age technology to commit and propagandize their genocide

It's plainly not an unreasonable proposition, nor does it seem to be intended to engage in battle or provoke. They're simply describing a perfectly horrible situation that happening on the ground (that some recognized experts in the field do consider to be a form of genocide per the UN definition of such) and the fact that modern information technologies seem to be a part of the mechanism that is bringing it about.

The post expresses an opinion, but it definitely wasn't flamebait.

I wasn't responding to any proposition, but rather to the pattern of how the account is using Hacker News over a long stretch of time. That's what the word "primarily" refers to, and it's the most important thing to understand.

Of course I replied to a specific post because any reply has to do that; but I was responding to the account's use of HN over time. That's the issue here.

I wrote the GP in haste and can see how this point wasn't obvious. On the other hand it should quickly become obvious to anyone who clicks on the link I provided (https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme...), which is the purpose of providing the link.

(more at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40589978)

Oh come on, it's obviously flamebait to say Israel is conducting a genocide even if you agree with the claim.

Absolutely amazing that people can make false claims of genocide and when someone points it out it’s “flagged”. HN is an absolutely vile community.

'False' is a matter of opinion, not an absolute.

eg: 26 March 2024 Human Rights https://news.un.org/en/story/2024/03/1147976

    Citing international law, Ms. Albanese explained that genocide is defined as a specific set of acts committed with the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group. 

    “Specifically, Israel has committed three acts of genocide with the requisite intent: causing seriously serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group, deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part, and imposing measures intended to prevent birth within the group,” she said.  

    Furthermore, “the genocide in Gaza is the most extreme stage of a long-standing settler colonial process of erasure of the native Palestinians,” she continued. 

Clearly there are opinions at odds with your opinion.

> the genocide in Gaza is the most extreme stage of a long-standing settler colonial process of erasure of the native Palestinians,

Hilarious considering every conflict has been started by Palestine. Ceasefires broken by Hamas on multiple occasions. And there’s no settler colonial process happening now or in the past.

But let’s continue to blame Israel when Hamas kills people trying to get food or supplies. Or blame Israel when Hamas fires its own rocket at a parking lot and claims 500 dead. Let’s blame Israel for trying to wipe out a terrorist organization that’s sole purpose is to wipe out the Jewish population and wipe Israel off the map.

While Israel is quite restrained. We will keep calling it genocide even tho ACTUAL genocide is happening every day in Iran and China and Africa. It’s fun to ignore what’s happening elsewhere so we can focus on Israel and making up things that aren’t happening.

I believe we've already established that your opinion doesn't align with the opinions of others.

> But let’s

Please don't speak for me, or for others when expressing your opinion.

> It’s fun to ignore what’s happening elsewhere

Perhaps for you but again, please don't speak for myself or for others.

I can speak and you and others when it’s clear you’re spreading propaganda.

Many would look at your comments and consider that you're spreading propaganda.

All that I've spread in my comments above (do please scroll back and check) is the message that opinions are divided.

Dang, We get you’re frustrated but he’s just stating his opinion. It’s not out of line relative to the other discourse in this thread.

The issue here isn't opinions nor (in this case) the other discourse in the thread. Rather, in this case, it is the account's comments over a long stretch of time.

The question "has an account been using HN primarily for political or ideological battle?" is one of the most important criteria we use in HN moderation. When it is the case, we ask an account to stop and/or end up banning it.

I think if you read the guide that dang linked to, it is clear that the account is breaking the rules for flamebait.

I have read the guide, although i appreciate reaffirming it as the source of truth. What’s hard is from a glance at the posters history their comments don’t seem to break the guidelines, but instead fall into the camp of spirited (albeit strongly so) opinions. Are there specific comments made that weren’t in the spirit of the guidelines? It feels “primarily for ideological purposes” is hard to counter in a discussion because “ideological” itself is a murky term at best.

The point is the pattern (I think the person you are responding to is incorrect about flamebait), you'd go look at the topic of their most recent comments - if the vast majority of interactions are to argue X then that seems to fall under 'idealogical battle'.

I'm not sure what's happening with the HN algorithm, but these anti-Israel, non-technology-related posts keep making the front page while e.g. https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/security/security-insider/in... does not

runarberg's comments are just a symptom of a deeper problem, dang

The algorithm is public

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1781013

That is a 14 year old HN post linking to a dead article, the comments on which say things like

> This is not the 'hacker news' ranking algorithm, this is the ranking algorithm distributed with 'ARC', which is the basis for the HN algorithm, but definitely not equal to it. The biggest missing ingredients are flagged posts dropping off quicker and posts that contain no URL dropping off quicker but there are quite a few other subtle tweaks.

Not really "public".

Was referring to pg's comment

What do you mean?

What? This is a reply to a political comment on a political post and you punish it for being about politics?

Moderation replies have to go somewhere! Did you miss my several explanations about how I wasn't responding to the specific comment, but to an overall pattern? Here they are:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40589862

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40589978

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40590128

I don't see how I could have been much clearer, so if you read those posts and still have a question that isn't addressed, I'd be curious to know what it is.